Aliens and Womanhood
When Alien burst through the big screen in 1979, nothing quite like it had been seen before. Many of the typical “monster kills people” elements were present, these sorts of movies dated back to the stone age of film, so what made Ridley Scotts take on the horror genre different and more profound than those that came before? The atmosphere and timeliness were perfect, Star Wars dominated the minds of movie goers and what better way to scare the hell out of the public than to twist the fun and frolic nature of space into fear and dread.
Deeper still were several subconscious fears the film portrayed but didn’t explain. And that’s what scared them the most, something in Alien unsettled them, but so subtle that many left the theater unable to comprehend the experience. New for the time, casual, normal, truckers in space brought the fear home. There was no hero of the day, no Luke Skywalker to save them. Ideas of birth trauma, sexuality, and rape, all dug into its audience. This made Alien revolutionary and legendary. Here lies the monumental challenge of James Cameron’s task, create a worthy sequel. Cameron’s answer: Aliens, a commentary of the role of women in society and a cautionary tale of the degradation of their role and power. Aliens is an action piece that adds complexity to its characters and more important, evolves the themes presented in Alien. Motherhood plays a key role as the films central theme and examines its corruption, monstrous nature, purity, and negligence all to the building up or detriment to society, but more so the film looks at the feminine power. Ripley, the films protagonist, finds renewed purpose in her role as mother; additionally she can be seen as a critical comparison against at modern feminism. Ripley’s world, dominated by the Weyland-Yutani Corporation, has created a future that disregards the role of women and motherhood, instills male instincts and priorities, then going so far as to mock the “weak” women who pursue their natural roles. In the end, it’s these natural female instincts that prove to be the future’s saving grace and its greatest fear. The culmination of this fear symbolized by the most horrific mother figure imaginable, a living mother monster metaphorically out for revenge on the society that has shunned it. Ripley finds renewed purpose in protecting this little girl, her maternal instincts revitalized but untested. Ripley transforms into Rebecca’s mother, this encompasses the major story arch of the film. The point in which they are introduced to each other is laced with symbolism. “(Their) relationship passes through a series of bonding phases. When Ripley enters the womb-like crevice in which Newt attempts to hide she becomes Newts principal protector and bearer of the girl’s identity” (Berenstien). Berenstien continues, “There are three fights to save Newt, each more suggestive than the last of Ripley's maternal heroism.” The first rescue removes Rebecca from her shelter within a small ventilation shaft, a sort of “womb” environment that Newt has come to call home a removal suggestive of birth from a false safety to experience the outside world. The second from the rescue from the “Facehugger” a beast that implants alien embryos into its victims through their mouth. An “aggressive sexual penetration symbolism” Ripley kills the creature, saving Newt from “sexual” threats, and the last from the Alien Queen, a representation of a monstrous mother figure. When all is said and done at the films finale, Newt runs to Ripley, embraces her and calls her “Mommy”. In a sense Ripley passed her test, overcoming the doubt that she could ever be considered a mother, a second chance. But is motherhood really the ultimate goal of all women as the film insists? Ripley’s strong and independent character seems to spotlight the feminist ideal of the modern woman while directly contrasting it by regulating her as a mother figure. Cameron’s messages seems to imply that the ultimate test of a woman to be a successful mother. During the 1980’s a surge of films depicting strong females entered the industry emulating society’s renewed feminist ideals, especially evident in the horror genre. Examples such as Halloween or the Friday the 13th series helped form this new type of protagonist. Perhaps Cameron purposely incorporated the duo role implying that the strong female is only half the sum when refusing to incorporate their biological role. |
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The role of the male helps to understand the message of female degeneration. The world or the galaxy in this case, appears to have succumbed to male influence and dominance. Money, power, and progress have stamped out the nuclear family, rendering the maternal role as obsolete. It seems to be the “ideal” society, but purposely contrasted against the female figure. Furthermore the female figure has only two designations, either a ‘dyke’ or overtly masculine female, and the other the mother. And its intentional.
The female characters exhibit strong male features or aspiration. Early in the film, a debriefing scene shows Ripley interrogated by a board of directors. Each dressed in typical business attire: suits and ties with sharp, ridged edges and each male except one. This lone female exhibits poor female traits instead embracing the characteristics of her male counterparts. She acts mercilessly and meticulously with the same corporate “sympathy.” Sharp edges and the blocky form of her attire hide any feminine curve. She also looks quite unattractive lacking makeup, stringy hair, and filled with the wrinkles of age for a woman of forty or so. For all intents and purposes, she is a man, a re-sculpted female to suit a corporate need
Vasquez, a marine and only one of three females in a crew of twenty, takes this reformed female image to another level. Vasquez male traits excel in contrast to her weaker male counter parts. “Has anyone mistaken you for a man?” (Cameron), the character Hudson jokingly asks her as she effortlessly exercises in the locker rooms. More than simple character exposition, or a absent minded addition of the now seemingly timeless stereotype, but a comment on how far removed from the female this future is and further so maintaining the thought that without motherhood, there is no true womanhood. She boasts, chest pounds, and notably carries a far bigger gun than the other soldiers. “I just need to know one thing, where they are” (Cameron). Vasquez boasts to much applause from her male friends seeking their testosterone filled approval. She craves acceptance as one of them.
This overwhelming dominance of the male persists until they arrive on the alien planet. As they enter the alien hive for the first time, the mask of male power falls. Cowardice and weakness emerge as they are no match for this primitive and hostile world.
More than simple fear tactics, the setting seems to portray a vengeful and monstrous female factor. “The marines feel at home with plastic, metal, glass, but are utterly bewildered when they arrive at this womb-tomb, an organic and female interior” (Bundtzen). The hive walls are organic, hot, and slimy. A symbol of the organic woman, that society has discarded, now out for revenge.
Further into this womb of death corpses litter the floor and walls, their chest cavities burst wide open, a corrupt and horrific version of birth. Then, finally, they find a live one. They huddle around the survivor (a woman) and try to free her, but it is too late. A “birth” occurs. The alien infant frees itself from the womb confines, bursting through the woman’s chest much to the horror of the man and “empowered” women. Here, inside the female, they are foreign.
Aliens further incorporate the themes of birth trauma and rape so explicit in the first film. Cameron compounds it through his discussion of motherhood and more so when looking at the role of women. The male dominate society does not understand motherhood, and thereby birth. When forced to behold it, they cower in fear, but the fear of what? The power women hold? Or maybe facing the trauma they incurred at birth that this society has suppressed, and blames women so to speak. Is overcoming this fear in accepting our brutal emergence into the world? In accepting is accepting womanhood.
“The band of marines who enter her vagina, then her womb (which is also a catacomb cluttered with bony human refuse), with all their fire power and ejaculatory short bursts of guns, are ineffectual and insignificant male gametes” (Bundtzen). Here the male is nothing and it’s the first time they’ve been faced with the lie propagated by humanity.
These marines are a product of a male ideal, encouraged to preform manly tasks, resist fear. Ripley accompanies them but remains untainted. “Efforts of a female warrior at the service of patriarchal culture preoccupations….(but) cannot displace herself from the empowerment of her anatomy.” (Berenstien) This is what makes her succeed where most of the others fail. By the movies end, only Ripley, Newt, a robot, and a greatly injured soldier named Hicks make it out alive. Ripley lives because she understands her womanly role, its meaning and purpose, and overcoming the temptation of the male embodiment.
Ripley escapes, the world blown to bits, but the queen won’t let them leave without a final fight. She provides the ultimate test, not solely a physical test but a mental one. Riply will free herself of nightmares by dispatching this mother of death, rescue her “daughter,” and overcome the monstrous female. This queen represents a fear that perhaps, led to a world where the mother is suppressed.
When H. R. Giger designed the Alien in 1979 he gave it strong sexual features and behaviors. The initial creature, a hand like organism, attaches itself to the face of its victim and lays an embryo inside. It acts as a mobile sexual organ. “It is no coincidence that these monsters are intimately linked to reproduction, or what can be termed a ‘Pregnancy anxiety’” (Berenstien). Motherhood incorporates pregnancy, the caring for a developing organism inside the woman.
The birth of the embryo incorporates the aforementioned birth trauma. The creator of these things, the Alien Queen, exhibits a direct contrast to the pure mother; she’s a walking Freudian complex.
Ripley is situated as the 'good' mother/ force of nature, while the alien queen is situated as a 'bad' mother/force of nature. Ripley is presented as caring, nurturing and protective towards the orphaned Newt, while the alien queen symbolizes nature at its most destructive, heightened through a nightmarish version of birth where unwitting subjects are forcibly penetrated and then made to carry an alien infant, which is 'born' by bursting out of their chest. (Cadwell)
Mothers see the nine months of pregnancy as a glorious moment, but also a fearful one. The experience culminates into birth, a very bloody painful experience. The alien creature takes this fear and corrupts it, playing on the lack of understanding of the process. It is the female power that man and woman fear.
Lying in a white hospital bed after her rescue, Ripley feels a surge and pain in her torso. She knows what it is, “Kill me!” she exclaims. The doctors restrain her. The infant alien rises from her stomach, stretching the skin, ready to pop, then Ripley wakes up. There can’t be any doubt that the hospital room accompanied with nurses and patient robes is a birthing room. This scene sets the tone for the whole film. Over the course of the film, Ripley overcomes this fear. The queen stands as the final test of this fear.
Many critics don’t agree with the message. These maternal fears are often disregarded as hokey, perhaps generated out of a simplistic male fear. “I want to ask why the female body must be represented with such primal terror, such intense repugnance, and why it needs to be so resoundingly defeated, sucked into the vacuum of space as if thrown back into whatever imaginative void could have germinated such horror” (Bundtzen).
The Queen never truly dies which seems to suggest that the beast is ever there. Motherhood can be the savior or the destroyer of humanity. Bundtzen also asks that if such a terror exists, why is it unbeatable? Why is it a cross for women to bear forever? Cameron may be exhibiting his own personal fears, insisting much like Sigmund Freud, that everyone carries this fear with them.
Motherhood stands as the films principal theme. This is fact. Cameron’s original script, Mother, was adapted and changed to become Aliens. The messages of womanhood, however, lie deeper engrained within the narrative. The film explores the fears that both men and woman have of women, of a strange and beautiful creative power, a power that through fear regulates women to a lesser role in society. What better way to contain fear then by confining it. Cameron asks that we put off this fear. Women need not be de-feminized, but women need not cast off their purpose, become men, in order to achieve the desired status. The film criticizes both extremes. True equality comes in understanding this power, not in eliminating it through male encouraged repression or through adaptation of radical feminism.
The female characters exhibit strong male features or aspiration. Early in the film, a debriefing scene shows Ripley interrogated by a board of directors. Each dressed in typical business attire: suits and ties with sharp, ridged edges and each male except one. This lone female exhibits poor female traits instead embracing the characteristics of her male counterparts. She acts mercilessly and meticulously with the same corporate “sympathy.” Sharp edges and the blocky form of her attire hide any feminine curve. She also looks quite unattractive lacking makeup, stringy hair, and filled with the wrinkles of age for a woman of forty or so. For all intents and purposes, she is a man, a re-sculpted female to suit a corporate need
Vasquez, a marine and only one of three females in a crew of twenty, takes this reformed female image to another level. Vasquez male traits excel in contrast to her weaker male counter parts. “Has anyone mistaken you for a man?” (Cameron), the character Hudson jokingly asks her as she effortlessly exercises in the locker rooms. More than simple character exposition, or a absent minded addition of the now seemingly timeless stereotype, but a comment on how far removed from the female this future is and further so maintaining the thought that without motherhood, there is no true womanhood. She boasts, chest pounds, and notably carries a far bigger gun than the other soldiers. “I just need to know one thing, where they are” (Cameron). Vasquez boasts to much applause from her male friends seeking their testosterone filled approval. She craves acceptance as one of them.
This overwhelming dominance of the male persists until they arrive on the alien planet. As they enter the alien hive for the first time, the mask of male power falls. Cowardice and weakness emerge as they are no match for this primitive and hostile world.
More than simple fear tactics, the setting seems to portray a vengeful and monstrous female factor. “The marines feel at home with plastic, metal, glass, but are utterly bewildered when they arrive at this womb-tomb, an organic and female interior” (Bundtzen). The hive walls are organic, hot, and slimy. A symbol of the organic woman, that society has discarded, now out for revenge.
Further into this womb of death corpses litter the floor and walls, their chest cavities burst wide open, a corrupt and horrific version of birth. Then, finally, they find a live one. They huddle around the survivor (a woman) and try to free her, but it is too late. A “birth” occurs. The alien infant frees itself from the womb confines, bursting through the woman’s chest much to the horror of the man and “empowered” women. Here, inside the female, they are foreign.
Aliens further incorporate the themes of birth trauma and rape so explicit in the first film. Cameron compounds it through his discussion of motherhood and more so when looking at the role of women. The male dominate society does not understand motherhood, and thereby birth. When forced to behold it, they cower in fear, but the fear of what? The power women hold? Or maybe facing the trauma they incurred at birth that this society has suppressed, and blames women so to speak. Is overcoming this fear in accepting our brutal emergence into the world? In accepting is accepting womanhood.
“The band of marines who enter her vagina, then her womb (which is also a catacomb cluttered with bony human refuse), with all their fire power and ejaculatory short bursts of guns, are ineffectual and insignificant male gametes” (Bundtzen). Here the male is nothing and it’s the first time they’ve been faced with the lie propagated by humanity.
These marines are a product of a male ideal, encouraged to preform manly tasks, resist fear. Ripley accompanies them but remains untainted. “Efforts of a female warrior at the service of patriarchal culture preoccupations….(but) cannot displace herself from the empowerment of her anatomy.” (Berenstien) This is what makes her succeed where most of the others fail. By the movies end, only Ripley, Newt, a robot, and a greatly injured soldier named Hicks make it out alive. Ripley lives because she understands her womanly role, its meaning and purpose, and overcoming the temptation of the male embodiment.
Ripley escapes, the world blown to bits, but the queen won’t let them leave without a final fight. She provides the ultimate test, not solely a physical test but a mental one. Riply will free herself of nightmares by dispatching this mother of death, rescue her “daughter,” and overcome the monstrous female. This queen represents a fear that perhaps, led to a world where the mother is suppressed.
When H. R. Giger designed the Alien in 1979 he gave it strong sexual features and behaviors. The initial creature, a hand like organism, attaches itself to the face of its victim and lays an embryo inside. It acts as a mobile sexual organ. “It is no coincidence that these monsters are intimately linked to reproduction, or what can be termed a ‘Pregnancy anxiety’” (Berenstien). Motherhood incorporates pregnancy, the caring for a developing organism inside the woman.
The birth of the embryo incorporates the aforementioned birth trauma. The creator of these things, the Alien Queen, exhibits a direct contrast to the pure mother; she’s a walking Freudian complex.
Ripley is situated as the 'good' mother/ force of nature, while the alien queen is situated as a 'bad' mother/force of nature. Ripley is presented as caring, nurturing and protective towards the orphaned Newt, while the alien queen symbolizes nature at its most destructive, heightened through a nightmarish version of birth where unwitting subjects are forcibly penetrated and then made to carry an alien infant, which is 'born' by bursting out of their chest. (Cadwell)
Mothers see the nine months of pregnancy as a glorious moment, but also a fearful one. The experience culminates into birth, a very bloody painful experience. The alien creature takes this fear and corrupts it, playing on the lack of understanding of the process. It is the female power that man and woman fear.
Lying in a white hospital bed after her rescue, Ripley feels a surge and pain in her torso. She knows what it is, “Kill me!” she exclaims. The doctors restrain her. The infant alien rises from her stomach, stretching the skin, ready to pop, then Ripley wakes up. There can’t be any doubt that the hospital room accompanied with nurses and patient robes is a birthing room. This scene sets the tone for the whole film. Over the course of the film, Ripley overcomes this fear. The queen stands as the final test of this fear.
Many critics don’t agree with the message. These maternal fears are often disregarded as hokey, perhaps generated out of a simplistic male fear. “I want to ask why the female body must be represented with such primal terror, such intense repugnance, and why it needs to be so resoundingly defeated, sucked into the vacuum of space as if thrown back into whatever imaginative void could have germinated such horror” (Bundtzen).
The Queen never truly dies which seems to suggest that the beast is ever there. Motherhood can be the savior or the destroyer of humanity. Bundtzen also asks that if such a terror exists, why is it unbeatable? Why is it a cross for women to bear forever? Cameron may be exhibiting his own personal fears, insisting much like Sigmund Freud, that everyone carries this fear with them.
Motherhood stands as the films principal theme. This is fact. Cameron’s original script, Mother, was adapted and changed to become Aliens. The messages of womanhood, however, lie deeper engrained within the narrative. The film explores the fears that both men and woman have of women, of a strange and beautiful creative power, a power that through fear regulates women to a lesser role in society. What better way to contain fear then by confining it. Cameron asks that we put off this fear. Women need not be de-feminized, but women need not cast off their purpose, become men, in order to achieve the desired status. The film criticizes both extremes. True equality comes in understanding this power, not in eliminating it through male encouraged repression or through adaptation of radical feminism.